A symposium/workshop conference is planned to bring together investigators studying various aspects of spinal cord development and reorganization in vertebrates. Although a major focus of the workshop will be normal development, attempts will be made to relate normal developmental to events following spinal cord injury in both adult and developing animals. In recent years significant progress has been made in our understanding of spinal cord development. Proliferation, differentiation, pathway formation, synaptogenesis and the ontogeny of spinal cord neurons and glia have all been the subjects of recent investigation. By assembling a group of investigators who work on different problems in different species and who use a variety of classical and modern biological approaches, we hope to further our understanding of normal development and to identify directions for future research that will lead to recovery of function following spinal cord injury in humans.